The present disclosure relates to an apparatus for finding, identifying, sorting, arranging, and stacking or otherwise managing utensils, such as forks and spoons. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to a utensil sorting device that can continually receive unsorted utensils while simultaneously sorting one more of the utensils, then identify and orient the utensil, followed by placing the utensil in a designated area. The apparatus can also be used for arranging and stacking utensils for secondary operations such as wrapping utensils in a napkin.
In industries such as restaurants, hotels, casinos, banquet halls, caters, hospitals, etc., a business may serve several hundred to several thousand guests per day. Each of these guests may use three or more utensils during their meal. Moreover, some businesses may serve 3 meals per day. This creates a need for the aforementioned businesses to clean thousands of utensils every day; the cleaning process involves soaking, sorting, and usually two washes. Furthermore, in some business, the utensils are wrapped in a napkin after they are cleaned, creating even more work that needs to be completed.
Typically these processes are done using unskilled labor. However, both processes are time consuming and often are required to be completed at times when the highest numbers of customers are at the facility. This can create a timing issue that forces a business to employ additional staff at the peak times, as well as keep staff at the facility for a longer time before or after a shift. Furthermore, due to the repetitive nature of the tasks, the employees can be at risk of developing repetitive stress injuries.
It is desirable to provide systems, apparatuses, devices, and methods that can complete as much as possible of the cleaning, sorting and wrapping processes with minimal human involvement. Furthermore, the device should be simple enough for an unskilled employee to operate, fast enough to sort, clean, and organize at the same rate a person can, as quiet as possible, and as compact as possible to minimize the amount of space required for the device at the business since space is typically limited.
Several devices have been developed for sorting utensils; most of these involve sizing apertures in the devices to allow only certain size items to pass through. Other systems may also employ a conveyor and/or vibration element to aid in separating the pieces from one another. These devices are limited in their ability because they require utensils to fit into a particularly sized aperture. Also, different utensils can have the same length, thus making the method of differentiating the utensils inadequate.
Some of the disadvantages to these systems include size, noise level, amount of human involvement, ability to integrate with existing equipment, and limitations that require utensils to be a specific size, as well as to have different lengths for each. Additionally, a number of the devices do not orient the utensils, which can be a time consuming, but necessary step in the utensil cleaning process. Moreover, several of the devices are not able to sort more than a single utensil at a time. Furthermore, not all of the devices are designed to fit in with existing standard restaurant equipment, such as tables, bus bin carts, etc.
Next, secondary operations, such as wrapping utensils in a napkin, require a user to orient the utensils before feeding them into a machine. Some systems require the user to put the utensils in a bin, while others have specially designed trays that the utensils can be washed in. Both of these systems require some level of human involvement to arrange the utensils.
For these reasons, it would be advantageous to create systems, apparatuses, and devices that are compact, reliable, sanitary, fast, and requires minimal human interaction to sort, arrange, or otherwise manage utensils. Such systems, apparatuses, devices, and methods would be able to sort, orient, soak, and set up the utensils for secondary operations such as utensil wrapping.
In some embodiments, ware can be inserted or placed into the unsorted tray in a random fashion. In certain instances, the random placement of ware allows pieces ware to be pushed up against the sides of the unsorted tray (i.e. perpendicular to the floor of the tray). Such pieces of ware are more difficult to grab, but are still needed to be sorted as well as the pieces in the center of the tray (i.e. lying parallel to the floor of the tray). For this reason, it may be helpful to have a mechanism to pull the ware from the side of the tray so that it is easier to grab.
Thus, the ware can be placed in a tray such that it is parallel or perpendicular to the bottom of a tray. The decision on which method to use depends on the step in the wash cycle of the ware. For this reason, it may be beneficial to be able to orient the ware in both directions; i.e. perpendicular to the bottom (floor) of the tray or parallel to the bottom (floor) of the tray.
During a work shift at a dining establishment, an employee may need to choose between tasks during busy hours. One task that may be scheduled to be performed at a later time is sorting ware. For this reason, it may be beneficial to have a way to see how much ware is in the sorted bins so that a user can decide when to clean the ware.
The sorting apparatus may be setup on a table that has multiple uses for different times of the day. The uses of the table may include food prep, temporary storage for dirty dishes, or general tasks. The sorting apparatus may occupy some or all of this space while these other tasks are being completed. For this reason, it may be desirable to allow the user to utilize the top of the sorting apparatus to perform these tasks so that the sorting apparatus does not need to be moved. Moreover, if the top of the sorting apparatus is used for general tasks then the user may want to adjust the height of the sorting apparatus so that it is in a more ergonomic position for completing the general tasks.
However, in some embodiments, some of the users may want to move the sorting apparatus out of the way completely while the general tasks are performed. For this reason, it may desirable to have the sorting apparatus fold up and stored during times it is not in use.
There are embodiments in which the user may want to prepare the ware for tasks after the ware is clean. A number of dining establishments wrap their clean silverware in a napkin and then place the wrapped ware on a table for a customer; this is a common task that may need to be done. Typically, a user may first select the correct combination of ware and then stack the ware in a given order. For example, one might put a knife down first, followed by a fork on top of the knife and then a spoon on top of the fork. It would be beneficial to the user if the sorting apparatus were to complete such a stacking operation for the user so that they do not have to complete it while wrapping the ware.